


Bridges

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:52:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't really matter where we end up, as long as it's here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bridges

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted May 2004.

Bridges  
By Candle Beck

(driving in San Francisco bites)

They got lost somewhere downtown, trying to find the exit for the Bay Bridge, hopelessly bewildered by the Saturday night Market Street crowds and the many different forms of public transportation that flooded by Mulder’s car, the sleek old-fashioned street cars on electric wires, the buses, the Muni trams, the taxi cabs that darted around corners and up alleys like they were being chased by the cops, the cable cars hung thick with tourists, their elbows hooked around the gleaming brass poles, swinging out into the warm San Francisco night.

“This isn’t my fault,” Mulder said, cursing under his breath as he pulled the car up short, a half a second too late to make the green light. “You’re the one who lives here, you should know where the goddamn bridge is.”

Zito pointed out the window. “The bridge is right there, dude.”

The Bay Bridge was the biggest thing in the whole city, filling the space between the skyscrapers, peeking out around every corner, fantastically huge, sweeping blue-gray, airplane-protected by chains of silver-yellow lights. The bridge climbed up the sky like a ladder, clutching together San Francisco and Oakland, dog’s-leg bent with the tunnel through Treasure Island. Although it wasn’t true that you could see the Bay Bridge from anywhere in the city, it was the kind of thing that should be true.

Mulder scowled at the mass of steel visible out Zito’s window. “Great. Problem solved, then. Except we still don’t know how to *get to* the fucking thing.”

Zito, unperturbed, flapped his hand. “I have faith in you, man, you’ll figure it out.”

“I’d be able to figure it out a lot easier if I could make a fucking *left turn* in this godforsaken city!” Mulder shouted out his window, drawing curious glances and a few answering yells.

Zito gave him a look. “Don’t take it out on the city. It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools, you know.”

Mulder slanted him an impatiently incredulous glance. “Are you talking in parables now?”

Zito grinned. “Just saying.” He tapped at the dashboard for a second, fiddling with the CDs, switching one for another, whistling tunelessly the way he did when he was bored. When he looked up again to find them still on Market, bearing down on the clock at the head of the Embarcadero Pier, he groaned. “No, man! You needed to go right at Seventh! Seventh!”

“Well, maybe if you’d for Christ’s sake *navigate* for once in your miserable life,” Mulder growled, spinning the wheel fiercely to duck onto a side street, make the loop around Union Square. “Instead of messing with the CD and taking up too much space, which I know are your special talents and everything, but-”

“Last time I tried to navigate for you,” Zito cut him off. “I ended up hitchhiking back from Richmond, so.”

“It was *your* fault we ended up in Richmond!” Mulder protested. “And you didn’t have to hitchhike, melodramatic punk, I was coming right back to pick you up. It was just a joke.”

Zito cocked an eyebrow. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Zito, get out of the motherfucking car before I beat you to death with that road atlas.’ So, you know, excuse me for deciding to take my chances with the potentially crazy people who gave me a ride.”

Mulder glanced at him. “You never told me you hitched back with crazy people.”

“Well, not really,” Zito shrugged. “It was actually a very nice couple coming back from a friend’s wedding. They gave me cake. But, the point is, they *coulda* been crazy. ‘Cause you just left me standing on the side of the road, anybody coulda come by.”

Mulder, suitably abashed at his tendency to let his impatience and annoyance get the best of him, muttered, “I was coming right back to pick you up.” He angled Zito his best impersonation of an apologetic look, reached out to tug on the sleeve of Zito’s T-shirt. “I’ll buy you some cake, to make it up to you.”

Zito grinned. “I think you should actually *bake* me a cake, if you’re really sorry.”

Mulder snorted. “I’m not *that* sorry.”

Zito craned his head to peer out at the sprawl of Union Square, the well-dressed theatre crowds out for a night on the town, then said thoughtfully, “You know, if we’d just stayed on Van Ness coming down, I don’t think we would have ended up in North Beach so many times.”

Mulder rolled his eyes. “Helpful.”

“Just get to the ballpark. It’s easy to find from the ballpark,” Zito advised.

“Zito, I swear to God, the only thing I could find in San Francisco right now is Union Square. Which would be perfect, if we were going to Sharper Image.”

Zito perked up. “Hey, let’s go to Sharper Image!” he said excitedly.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Mulder asked, a reluctant smile pricking at the corners of his mouth.

“I spend too much time with you,” Zito shot back cheerfully. “You want me to drive?”

“There is no way I’m letting you behind the wheel of my car,” Mulder answered resolutely.

“Jeez, run into *one* mailbox, you’re hearing about it for the rest of your life,” Zito complained.

Mulder snuck across Market Street, heading south on Fourth, replying, “First of all, you ran into about four mailboxes. They were all just close together. Second of all . . . well, I don’t really need a second of all. You’re not driving. I’d like to get home alive tonight.”

“Gonna starve to death before you find the exit, but whatever,” Zito mumbled.

Ahead of them, SBC Park rose with its brand-new 1930s shine, the smooth red bricks and green metal, a statue of Willie Mays caught perfectly between swinging and running holding a spot of honor at the front.

Mulder scanned restlessly for signs that would direct him to 80, the highway over the bridge, but he didn’t see anything until Zito suddenly shouted, “There! Right there, dude, turn, turn!”

Startled, Mulder yelled back, “Where! Fucking where?”

Zito sighed, settled back. “You missed it,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Jesus Christ, Zito! If you’re gonna nearly give me a heart attack, could you at least do it early enough for me to make the goddamned turn?”

“Not my fault you’re slow on the uptake,” Zito said mildly.

Mulder glared at him as they pulled up to a stoplight by the train station. “You do realize that the only thing keeping me from killing you right now is the fact that we need you in the rotation, right?”

Zito smiled, poked Mulder’s side, making the other man squirm. “Yeah, is that the only reason?”

Mulder caught his hand. “That’s all that’s coming to mind,” he answered, then pulled Zito to him, kissing him quickly there at the stoplight.

When they drew back, Zito grinned at him. “I’m having a really good time. I think we should just stay lost.”

Mulder grinned back at him, and the Bay Bridge hovered there above them like it had always been part of the sky.

* * *

(sharks in the water)

They’d gone down to San Jose to see an Imax movie, the theatre a cluster of three giant domes holding the biggest screens in the state, just across the highway from the Winchester Mystery House and all its dead-end doors opening onto solid brick walls and sheer drops.

Coming back, they took the Dumbarton Bridge to cross over to the East Bay, to avoid the Bay Bridge traffic. The Dumbarton Bridge cut through the baylands, the marshy edges of the water, blocked out in irregular polygonal shapes of green and dark red, carefully preserved for the endangered species that made their home in the uncertain swamps between the low-slung urban mess of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco International Airport.

The bridge was long and low and flat, lining out like the horizon, the pavement even and unmarked, edged by the lightly brushed waves.

“And then, did you see that guy, when he fell off the mountain, right, he just went, like, whoa! And then he was totally falling, but the rope caught him and it was, like, dude! And he swung and he was gonna hit the rock, but he got his feet out and was, like, bam! And then-”

“Dude, Zito, take a breath,” Mulder said with a smile.

Zito grinned bashfully. “Sorry. It was just really cool.”

“I know. And the reason I know is that I was there too. I was the guy next to you, remember?”

Zito faked a look of surprise. “That was you? Shit, I should have stolen some more of your popcorn.”

“You couldn’t have stolen more than you did, man, because you stole all of it.”

“Oh,” Zito said. “Well, good then.”

Mulder spared him an exasperated glance, but Zito was already digging in his backpack, pulling out the cheap disposable camera he’d picked up at a gas station a few days before.

He wound the film, and then snapped a quick shot of Mulder’s profile as he drove. Mulder scowled at the road. “Don’t take a picture of me now, you’re getting my bad side.”

“You don’t have a bad side, dude,” Zito said, the compliment unthinking and off-hand as Zito turned to focus on the water.

“You’re never gonna get a picture of a shark, man, it’s a total lost cause,” Mulder told him, but Zito waved him off.

“There’s other stuff out there. Whales. Buoys. Um . . . dolphins.”

Mulder snorted. “Yeah, dolphins in the thirty degree water. I’m sure.”

Zito happily clicked away, taking pictures of the water and the marshes and the rails at the sides of the bridge. Mulder could already see the photos that would be developed, skewed angles and dizzy perspectives, everything either too close or too far to be seen properly. Mulder used to think that Zito just sucked at taking pictures, but later he decided that it would be weird if Zito produced well-balanced, in-focus pictures, because Mulder was pretty sure that Zito saw the world the way it looked through his camera lens, blurry and sweetly tilted and more interesting than reality.

Zito took a picture of the CDs littering the space between their seats, then one of Mulder’s hands on the steering wheel, then one of his own shoe.

“Is there a specific reason why we’re documenting this afternoon?” Mulder asked as Zito immortalized the license plate of the car in front of them.

“Sure,” Zito answered. “See, people only ever remember to take pictures when they’re on vacation or it’s like a special occasion or something. But that shit, you remember anyway, right? Like, I don’t need photos of Rome or the night we won the division title, because I know that stuff by heart, you know? So, I figure, we should take pictures of random days, random times. Like, maybe in a couple of years, I won’t remember going to this movie with you or driving across this bridge-”

“Or what pair of shoes you were wearing,” Mulder added with a smile.

“Yeah, or what you look like driving. But now I got the pictures to remind me.”

Mulder wondered, “What do I look like driving?” trying to sit up straighter and look more photo-worthy.

Zito held up the camera and squinted through the lens at the other man. “Very cool,” he nodded. “You’ve definitely got this hot-guy-behind-the-wheel-of-a-car thing going on right now, it’s working for you.”

Feeling a little self-conscious, Mulder tried to laugh it off. “Note to self: Zito finds me driving a turn-on.”

Zito rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause that’s information you’re really gonna put to good use.”

Mulder lifted his eyebrows suggestively. “I don’t know, man, I might be getting some ideas.”

Zito snickered. “That’d be pretty funny, if only for the newspaper headlines they’d write after you crashed us into a tree.”

“Are you saying I can’t multi-task?”

“I’m saying that particular task is not compatible with driving a car.”

Mulder shook his head, bemoaning, “Just my luck to end up with the one guy in the country with no sense of adventure.”

“Hey, I’m adventurous!” Zito protested. “I’m nothing but adventurous. I’m like . . . the guy who likes adventure.”

Mulder smirked. “Wow, that was almost poetry.”

“You’re the one who won’t eat sushi. A real risk-taker, you are,” Zito teased.

“Dude, sushi is wrong. It’s a very wrong food that’s just wrong. Stuff needs to be *cooked*!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re real tough, except when you come face-to-face with a crab roll. Then it’s like, head for the hills!”

Zito grinned at him, and Mulder reached out to take the camera from him, judging the distance as best he could while still keeping an eye on the road, snapping a photo of that look on Zito’s face, because that was something he’d like to remember.

* * *

(running away from bad weather)

Half Moon Bay, when they finally got out there, was anticlimactically overcast, the clouds too low to make it over the hills, tucked against the shore. Zito just kept driving south down the Cabrillo Highway, out past the crushed-stone beach, the beach with the cool caves, the beach where you could build five foot tall log cabins out of the driftwood that sprawled out white in the surf like huge bleached bones, the beach by the lighthouse, Mulder wondering aloud if they were gonna end up in Los Angeles, seeing as how it didn’t seem like they were gonna stop any time soon. Eventually, redeemed, Zito drove them right out of the bad weather, cresting an even rise and the world breaking open in front of them, the feather-green hills and ducking roads to one side, the unbroken shore on the other, the Pacific Ocean unaccountably blue, sparks flickering on the waves.

They’d messed around, Zito trying to find some good waves to surf but giving up, the sea as clear as a mirror, the waves disintegrating so lightly on the sand, it was like they were apologizing for daring to intrude. They played long toss with an unopened can of Coke, hurling it all the way down the length of the beach, somersaulting in the air and caught bright red in the light, and then had a quick rock-paper-scissors match to determine who would actually open the can. Zito lost, and held the Coke out at arm’s length, which did nothing to prevent him from getting drenched when the soda exploded. Mulder was hooting with laughter when Zito tackled him and poured the rest of the can over his head, Mulder sputtering and chasing Zito into the water again.

Soon enough, there was sand in their hair and shoes, water in their ears, and Zito kept diving below, swimming soundless and predatory, hooking an arm around Mulder’s legs and trying to pull him down.

By the time they got back to the car, towels laid out on the seats, they were both beat, popping open sodas with extra caffeine in them, a bag of Skittles spilled out in the coin tray, the tips of Zito’s fingers stained purple.

Back up to Half Moon Bay, and out to 92, Zito asked, “You’ve been out to Skyline, right?”

Mulder, slouched down and trying not to nod off, the car warm and rumbling around him, blinked, pointed out the window as an exit zipped by. “You mean that Skyline, right there?”

Zito nodded. They were at the height of the road, about to go spiraling down into the valley that holed up in the strip of peninsula between the bay and the ocean. Their backs were to it, now, but the vista point at Skyline faced west, winding long across the highest string of hills that kept the coast well protected from the land. Skyline faced west; you could see everything from up there.

Mulder rubbed a hand across his face. “No, never been up there.”

Zito drummed his thumb on the steering wheel, keeping time. “That’s where I saw the solar eclipse last spring.”

“Yeah?” Mulder said, a little surprised. “Why did I think you were at my house for that eclipse?” confused with his false memories of Zito standing in his backyard, his features getting dimmer as the sun was edged out.

Half a grin on his face, Zito shrugged. “Because you’re a crazy man and there’s no accounting for what goes on in your head.”

Mulder shoved him, but only a little. They whipped over the highway overpass, Interstate 280’s eight lanes broad and open, only a few cars slipping through. As they cut across the peninsula towards the San Mateo Bridge, Mulder asked, “So, it was pretty cool? The eclipse, up on Skyline?”

Zito kept his eyes on the road, being a good driver and everything, and nodded, the profile of his expression looking serene, perfectly figured out. “I nearly went blind and all, but it was awesome. There was a bunch of people up there. This one guy, from, like, fucking Thailand, right?”

Zito shot him a quick look to make sure he was still following. Mulder was near to being half-asleep, comfortable and lank with exhaustion, a sweet quiet throb in his body, salt drying in his hair. He felt, without having much of anything to back it up, like he’d done something right, like maybe he’d been good that day.

He tipped his chin slightly to let Zito know he was listening. “Sure, Thailand. Did he speak English?”

Zito breathed out a laugh, darting between cars like a pinball. “Yeah, man, better than I do.”

“Well, that’s not saying much,” Mulder said back lazily, not even bothering to try and dodge Zito’s retaliatory smack.

“Anyway,” Zito continued, “We were talking, you know. Watching the eclipse and everything, talking. This guy, right, he’s been traveling around, like, the whole *world*, man, dude’s been everywhere. Buncha places I never even heard of before. Like, did you know Luxembourg is an actual country? Did you know that? I thought it was, like, a fairy tale land or something.”

Mulder let his eyes drift close briefly, a shade of a smile on his face, Zito and his ignorance of European geography, Zito and his action-hero manner of driving, Zito and his smooth voice.

“And I basically said to the guy, like, what are you doing here? Meaning, you know, what are you doing in California, America. And he just looks at me like it’s totally obvious and says, ‘I’m waiting for the moon to get in the way of the sun.’”

Zito grinned. “Just like that, he said it. Like *of course*. Like, why else would he be here? And I was kinda, you know, thinking of all the places that there are in the world, yeah, and this guy from Thailand ends up on the same hill as me, this guy from like a million miles away and he ends up on the same hill, just . . . waiting for the sun to disappear. It was so cool.”

They’d hit the bridge, the breathless climb up, five stories above the water before plummeting back down like rockets to the level of the bay, the high-armed streetlights that ran out in two neat funneling rows, one on each side, parallel lines looking for a place to intersect, and just as they began the long roll towards the eastern side, Mulder yawned against his shoulder and mumbled, “Keep talking, Zito, willya, just keep talking for a little while,” and then fell asleep.

* * *

(it doesn’t really matter where we end up, as long as it’s here)

They’d been down at the Presidio, for reasons passing understanding, and Zito had gotten the brilliant idea to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Mulder thought he was just fucking around, at first. “Yeah, sure, then we’ll swim out to Angel Island, have a picnic,” rolling his eyes.

Zito only grinned. “I’m serious. You’ve never walked across the Golden Gate Bridge?”

Mulder hiked his eyebrows. “I don’t even think we’re *allowed* to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. I think we’d probably get snipered by the Highway Patrol or something.”

Zito shook his head, hooked a hand around Mulder’s arm and tugged him close, the shadows of the old fort and the bars of Spanish light on Zito’s face. “Nah, I’ve done it a million times.” He thought about that, shrugged. “Well, maybe not a million. Maybe like twice. But it can be done, this I know.”

Zito had already started walking, up the tangled dirt hiking path through the straggle of woods. Mulder really had no choice but to follow, seeing as how Zito had the car keys.

“So, okay, assuming we do get over without being shot, what’ll we do once we’re on the other side?” Mulder asked, feeling like he was talking about a jailbreak or something, digging tunnels, scaling fences.

Zito picked up a stick, slashing at the shrubs, samurai fighting, not too concerned with the question. “Then we’ll be on the other side,” he said implacably, and Mulder decided that was reason enough..

It was a long walk uphill to the bridge, little pieces of wood sneaking into Mulder’s shoes, dry leaves in Zito’s hair. They were both breathing hard by the time they actually got to the toll plaza, night falling, the car headlights unfathomed and bleeding out a lake of white.

“See . . . see,” Zito said, panting and digging in his pocket for spare change to pay the toll, trying to get his breath back, grinning. “Told . . . you . . . it was . . . okay.”

Mulder just rolled his eyes again, wanting to pick the leaves out of Zito’s hair, wanting to brush the back of his hand across the smear of dust on Zito’s chin.

On the pedestrian walkway, torn by the destructive wind, they had to be on their toes, careful of the people on racing bikes who slotted behind them, shortly calling, “On your left!” before they blew past, the red and white reflectors on their wheels spinning like carousels.

Dusk on the bridge, and the sun was setting over the water.

Mulder studied the huge bundles of cables, thicker around than his chest, streaking upward on a swift curve, an exponential equation, a rust color halfway between red and orange.

“You know, a bunch of people died building this bridge,” he said.

Zito nodded, the collar of his shirt blown up, hiding his mouth. “I did know that. Also building the Hoover Dam.”

Mulder, unable to help himself, reached out and flipped Zito’s collar back down. It didn’t last, a few seconds later the wind rearing up and slapping them, plastering their clothes down, Zito’s collar cutting across his jaw.

“Yeah, but nobody writes songs about the Hoover Dam,” Mulder replied.

Zito bent a slight smile, hummed under his breath. They’d come to the middle of the bridge, halfway there and halfway back, and they stopped, leaning on the rail, watching the sun set. Their arms pressed together, shoulder to elbow, and they seemed somehow very far away from the rush of traffic at their backs.

Zito’s eyes tracked across the ocean, all the leaves combed free from his hair, looking clean and afraid of nothing, looking like he deserved everything that had been given to him.

Zito said quietly, that implied smile still on his face, “Open up that Golden Gate . . . California, here we come . . . right back where we started from . . . California, here we come.”

Mulder flipped Zito’s collar back down again, and touched Zito’s face, the tips of his fingers against the line of Zito’s jaw for barely an instant, drawing the other man’s eyes back to him, and they stood there on the bridge looking at each other until the Pacific Ocean swallowed up the light and they couldn’t see anything anymore.

THE END


End file.
